Tuesday, March 24, 2009

In the not too distant future, once I've got Urheim up and running (should be sooner rather than later) and I've gotten out from under some other projects I have cooking, I'm probably going to revamp the website a bit. Much as I like the look of the place as it is, it could be a bit better organized and easy to access, particularly when it comes to my old posts (especially reviews, retrospectives, and the pulp fantasy library). Likewise, I eventually need to find new images to use to decorate the place -- images I either actually own or that I am legally able to use. No one from WotC has complained about either my masthead or the Greg Bell pic on the right. Yet. But they'd be well within their rights to do so. I'd rather not give them the chance. I may also have to call upon the services of a professional web designer to help me with this. Seeing how nice the new Mythmere Games site is, I have to admit to being a little envious.

No ETA on when any of this might happen, but it's slowly moving to the front burner.

9 comments:

I believe that the S&W website went with the Vigilance theme on Wordpress because it is such an open-ended platform to work with. You could give it a try and wind up with equally slick results but a totally different look.

The format of Grognardia is neither here nor there, but I hope the plan for any revamp is keeping the focus firmly on being "an exploration of the history and traditions of the hobby of role-playing."

I think it's the editorial content that built Grognardia into the cornerstone that it is. I count reviews, pulp fantasy library, and retrospective posts as "editorial content," but the stand-alone essays are probably the most important of the lot, yet easiest to ignore and most likely to be ignored in a more traditional site format.

I may be in the minority in thinking this, but I think the editorial content has more universal applicability, and creates more discussion and debate here and elsewhere (getting the traditional games and methods and real history in front of more people), than the actual gaming material or other original work.

Not that Grognardia shouldn't be a platform to promote your gaming stuff, but lately I've noticed a shift in focus, combined with the Lord of the Green Dragon involvement (which I feared, needlessly it now seems, would siphon historical content), and now talk of a revamp, which has me a bit nervous.

My only feedback (you were looking for feedback right?) is the pulp fantasy gallery/library has two different tags so not all the entries are quick and easy to find if you click on a tag. My suggestion is to re-tag some of them so all entries show up in a search.

I share the other commentators' enjoyment of your site as it exists... but if you want to go from having a blog to having a website, I'd be happy to help out with setting up a Drupal site. You can get a lot of good, powerful functionality out of Drupal with just enabling modules and setting up configurations.

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